YOU LOOK GREAT. A SEA OF BLUE. 20 YEARS AGO I WAS ONE OF THOSE DROPLETS IN THE SEA OF BLUE.

I’M HONORED TO BE SPEAKING WITH YOU HERE TODAY. BUT I’M NOT HONORED SO MUCH AS I AM SURPRISED. BECAUSE THE DATA 20 YEARS AGO WOULD NEVER HAVE MODELED A SCENARIO IN WHICH I WOULD BE SPEAKING AT GRADUATION IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH.

I WAS A WORDS GUY WHO IN COLLEGE TOOK ABSOLUTELY AS LITTLE MATH AS POSSIBLE. THE ONE QUANTITATIVE COURSE I DID TAKE IN COLLEGE WAS A STATISTICS CLASS. PROFESSOR LEDBETTER — WHO IS RETIRING THIS YEAR — WAS THE INSTRUCTOR, AND IT HAS THE HONOR OF BEING THE LOWEST GRADE ON MY PARTICULARLY UNREMARKABLE TRANSCRIPT.

IF 2017 RYAN HAD GIVEN A GRADUATION SPEECH TO 1997 RYAN, WHAT HE MIGHT HAVE TOLD HIM WAS THAT AT THIS MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE, ALL THE POSSIBLE FUTURES THAT YOU’VE IMAGINED FOR YOURSELF — AND EVEN THOSE YOU CAN’T IMAGINE — HAVE A PROBABILITY GREATER THAN 0 BUT LESS THAN 1. AND AT THIS POINT, YOU STILL DON’T YET HAVE ENOUGH DATA TO BUILD A GOOD MODEL FOR WHAT LIFE HAS IN STORE FOR YOU. AND THAT DATA, WHILE GOOD AT TELLING US WHAT HAS BEEN, AND WHAT IS, AND WHAT MIGHT BE — IS NOT AS POWERFUL AS STORIES TO HELP US IMAGINE THE LIFE WE WANT AND TO HELP US MOVE THE ODDS OF GETTING THERE CLOSER TO 1.

DURING MY 20-YEAR CAREER IN JOURNALISM, DATA HAS BECOME A POWERFUL TOOL FOR FINDING STORIES THAT WE MIGHT MISS IF WE RELIED ON INTERVIEWS AND OBSERVATION ALONE. AS JOURNALISTS WORK TO SHINE LIGHT IN DARK PLACES, HOLD POWERFUL PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE AND EXPLAIN THE INCREASINGLY COMPLEX WORLD WE ALL SHARE, DATA HELPS US DEVELOP THE WHO, WHAT, WHEN AND WHERE OF OUR STORIES. BUT DATA ALONE CAN’T TELL US “WHY?” OR “SO WHAT?” UNTIL WE ADD SOME PLOT TO THE STORY, DATA IS JUST A COLD FOSSIL.

SEE, TO HAVE A GOOD STORY, YOU HAVE TO RICH MOMENTS. LIKE THIS MOMENT THAT WE’RE ALL SHARING NOW. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT OF YOUR CAROLINA STORY, NOT BECAUSE WHAT I’M SAYING RIGHT NOW WILL BE PARTICULARLY MEMORABLE FOR YOU IN 20 YEARS. THIS MOMENT IS POWERFUL BECAUSE IT’S ONE TO WHICH YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN DOZENS OF TIMES IN YOUR IMAGINATION. THIS MOMENT — NOT AS IT ACTUALLY EXISTS, BUT AS IT EXISTED IN THE STORIES YOU TOLD YOURSELVES ABOUT IT — PROPELLED YOU THROUGH HARD TIMES OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS, TIMES WHEN THE DATA MIGHT HAVE TOLD YOU YOU WOULDN’T MAKE IT.

DATA CAN TELL US A LOT OF IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTES OF THIS MOMENT. I CAN TELL YOU HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE SITTING HERE. AND, IN FACT, I CAN TELL YOU THAT YOUR NAME IS MORE LIKELY TO BE EMILY OR MATTHEW THAN ANYTHING ELSE. AND WITH ENOUGH DATA, I MIGHT EVEN BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW EACH OF YOU GOT HERE. BUT WHAT I CAN’T TELL YOU — AND WHAT NO DATA CAN TELL YOU — IS WHY YOU ARE HERE.

THE DAY IS NOT FAR OFF WHERE WE COULD GATHER ENOUGH DATA ABOUT THIS MOMENT TO RECREATE IT IN VIRTUAL REALITY WITH PRETTY HIGH FIDELITY. IN FACT, COLLABORATIONS AMONG JOURNALISM, STATISTICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE RIGHT HERE AT UNC WILL MAKE THAT DAY ARRIVE SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.

BUT WHILE DATA MIGHT ONE DAY BE USED TO RECREATE MOMENTS, IT CAN’T TELL STORIES. BECAUSE STORIES ARE RICH MOMENTS THAT ARE STRUNG TOGETHER WITH MEANING. STORIES NEED THE WHO, WHAT, WHEN AND WHERE OF DATA. BUT THEY AREN’T STORIES UNTIL THEY ANSWER THE QUESTION “WHY?”

SO, WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

YOU SEE, FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, THE UNIVERSITY — THEY ALL HAVE DATA ABOUT YOU. BUT YOU YOURSELVES ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO GIVE THAT DATA MEANING, AND YOU GIVE IT MEANING BY TELLING YOURSELVES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD STORIES. AND IT’S THOSE STORIES THAT PROVIDE THE MORAL PROPULSION TO CHANGE THE DATA ITSELF.

SO, WHY ARE YOU HERE?

NOW, IF I COULD HAVE SUCKED UP ALL YOUR ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION WHY ARE YOU HERE AND RUN THEM THROUGH SOME NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING APPLICATION I MIGHT BE ABLE TO REDUCE ALL OF THAT DATA TO A SINGLE, MEAN ANSWER: YOU’RE HERE BECAUSE YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED THE DEGREE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL IN 2017.

THAT’S THE COMMON REASON WE ARE ALL HERE. BUT WHAT’S THE REASON ANY ONE OF YOU ARE HERE. WHY ARE YOU HERE?

SO WHILE YOU’RE ALL MEDITATING ON THAT QUESTION, I’M GOING TO TALK TO THE PEOPLE WHO GOT YOU HERE — YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR FAMILIES, AND THE MILLIONS OF NORTH CAROLINIANS WHO WORK HOURLY WAGE JOBS AND PAY THEIR TAXES BECAUSE THEY SEE YOU AND YOUR PURSUIT OF THIS DEGREE AS A WORTHY INVESTMENT.

TO THOSE OF YOU WHO CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THESE STUDENTS’ SUCCESS, WHAT YOU HAVE BEFORE YOU ARE BUDDING PROFESSIONALS IN SOME OF THE HIGHEST PAID AND FASTEST GROWING FIELDS. IN THE U.S. ALONE, THERE ARE ABOUT 100,000 JOBS FOR STATISTICIANS, AND IN 2024 THERE WILL BE ANOTHER 30,000. THE MEDIAN SALARY FOR THESE FIELDS IS ABOUT DOUBLE THE MEDIAN SALARY FOR A NEWS REPORTER. ACCORDING TO MY FORMER EMPLOYER, USNEWS, THE JOB OF STATISTICIAN IS THE FOURTH “BEST” JOB IN AMERICA. OR, ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT, IT’S THE TOP JOB WHERE YOU DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S BLOOD.

AS THIS DEPARTMENT’S WEBSITE WILL TELL YOU, THE GRADUATES SITTING HERE ARE WELL QUALIFIED TO “TACKLE CHALLENGING QUANTITATIVE PROBLEMS IN A BUSINESS OR SCIENTIFIC ENVIRONMENTS.” THEY WILL GO ON TO CAREERS IN GENOMICS; BIOLOGICAL MODELING; ENVIRONMENTAL STATISTICS; INSURANCE AND FINANCIAL MATHEMATICS; REVENUE, WORKFORCE, AND SUPPLY-CHAIN MANAGEMENT; TRAFFIC FLOW AND CONGESTION; AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS.

BUT REGARDLESS OF THE FIELD, A BIG PART OF MANY OF THEIR JOBS WILL BE ASSESSING RISK AND UNCERTAINTY.

GRADUATES, YOU ARE EMBARKING ON CAREERS IN WHICH YOUR WILL BE ASKED TO REDUCE RISK AND UNCERTAINTY JUST AT THE MOMENT THE WORLD SEEMS TO PREFER EXACTLY THOSE THINGS.

AS JOURNALISTS WHO TRIED TO PREDICT THE OUTCOME OF LAST YEAR’S ELECTION CAN TELL YOU, OLD MODELS ARE SUDDENLY INSUFFICIENT. AND IT’S NOT JUST IN POLITICS WHERE THE WORLD SEEMS ON UNCERTAIN FOOTING. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS ACCELERATING AND BECOMING MORE ERRATIC. MODELS OF MILITARY POWER AND THE VERY RELEVANCE OF NATIONS ARE UP FOR DEBATE. AND CLOSER TO HOME, THE PATH TO ADULTHOOD AND ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE IS VEERING OF A COURSE THAT IT’S BEEN ON FOR GENERATIONS.

WHEN MANY OF YOU WERE IN KINDERGARTEN, MEN TRAINED AND FINANCED BY THE AL QAEDA TERRORIST ORGANIZATION DESTROYED THE NEW YORK WORLD TRADE CENTER AND BADLY DAMAGED THE PENTAGON. THAT WAS A MOMENT OF GREAT UNCERTAINTY THAT IS RICH IN DATA, BUT IT’S THE STORIES THAT WE TELL OURSELVES ABOUT THAT MOMENT THAT GIVE IT SUCH MEANING THAT THE NUMBERS 9 AND 11 CAN NO LONGER STAND FOR ANYTHING ELSE.

WHEN YOU WERE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL, A COLLAPSE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY CAUSED JOBS LOST AND DREAMS DEFERRED TO BE PROMINENT TOPICS IN EITHER YOUR OWN HOUSE OR YOUR FRIENDS’ FAMILIES. THOSE MOMENTS ARE PART OF YOUR LIFE STORY JUST LIKE TODAY IS.

UNCERTAINTY SEEMS TO BE EVERYWHERE THESE DAYS. FOR MANY PEOPLE, THE INSTINCT IS TO CLING TO SECURITY AS IF THE SONG IS ABOUT TO STOP IN A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS. OTHERS SEE IN UNCERTAINTY A CHANCE TO SOW DOUBT AND UNDERMINE EVIDENCE.

FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE, UNCERTAINTY IS A SYNONYM FOR FEAR AND AN EXCUSE FOR CYNICISM. AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO ASK PEOPLE WITH YOUR SKILLS, GRADUATES, TO TELL THEM HOW TO PROFIT FROM FEAR AND HOW THEY SHOULD HEDGE THEIR BETS SO THAT WHEN THE SHUFFLE IS DONE THEIR CARD IS ON TOP.

LIKE JOURNALISTS, YOUR JOBS WILL BE TO SORT OUT THE SIGNAL FROM THE NOISE AND TURN DATA POINTS INTO ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE. AND ALSO LIKE JOURNALISTS, YOUR CHALLENGE IS CHOOSING WHICH SOURCES TO TRUST, WHICH BITS OF INFORMATION ARE RELEVANT, AND THEN HOW TO COMMUNICATE INHERENTLY UNCERTAIN FINDINGS SO THAT THEY CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY PEOPLE WHO DON’T HAVE YOUR ANALYTICAL EXPERTISE.

THE CHALLENGE OF TACKLING THESE QUANTITATIVE PROBLEMS DOESN’T EXIST JUST IN BUSINESS AND SCIENTIFIC ENVIRONMENTS. THE REASON YOUR SKILLS ARE SO VALUABLE IS BECAUSE THE WORLD TODAY IS RICH WITH DATA BUT POOR IN OUR ABILITY TO MAKE SENSE OF IT.

THE NEWSROOM IS JUST ONE PLACE THAT IS WAKING UP TO THE VALUE OF YOUR SKILLS. ADVERTISERS, LEGISLATORS; TERRORISTS, TRUCKERS, AND TAXI DRIVERS; POLICE AND POLITICAL DISSIDENTS ALL WANT YOUR SKILLS. YOUR GENERATION OF STATISTICIANS AND DATA SCIENTISTS WILL HAVE INCREDIBLE PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITY, AND THE STORY YOU TELL YOURSELF ABOUT WHY YOU ARE HERE TODAY WILL HELP DETERMINE WHETHER HUMANITY USES DATA TO EMPOWER OR ENSLAVE ITSELF.

DATA-DRIVEN AUTOMATION IS ABOUT TO UPEND THE GLOBAL WORKFORCE. FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE FIELD OF JOURNALISM, DURHAM COMPANY AUTOMATED INSIGHTS TURNS DATA INTO ARTICLES FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

THIS KIND OF AUTOMATION IS EXCITING. BUT WILL WE BECOME SO ENTRANCED BY AUTOMATING THE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IS THAT WE FORGET THAT DATA CANNOT TELL US INEVITABLY WHAT WILL BE? THAT’S LEFT UP TO US. WE CAN’T FORGET THAT EVERY FUTURE IS POSSIBLE, AND THAT IF WE HAVE CURIOSITY, IMAGINATION AND PERSEVERANCE WE CAN TIP THAT NEEDLE IN THE DIRECTION WE WANT.

NOW WE KNOW THAT ALL THE CURIOSITY, IMAGINATION AND PERSEVERANCE IN THE WORLD DOESN’T ALWAYS GET US WHAT WE WANT. THE STORIES OF OUR LIVES ARE NOT WORKS OF FICTION OF WHICH WE ARE THE OMNIPOTENT AUTHORS. OUR STORIES COLLIDE WITH THE STORIES OF OTHERS, AND VERY OFTEN THE STORY THE REST OF THE WORLD SEEMS TO BE WRITING FOR US DOES NOT MATCH OUR PLOT AT ALL. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU PUT ANY EFFORT INTO CREATING THE FUTURE YOU WANT FOR YOURSELF, THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER PEOPLE WHO WILL BE PUTTING EFFORT INTO CREATING A FUTURE YOU DON’T WANT.

IF THERE ARE 200 PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM, THEN THERE ARE 200 UNIQUE STORIES ABOUT WHY EACH OF US ARE HERE. PART OF THE REASON THAT GRADUATION IS SO POWERFUL IS THAT IT’S A MOMENT IN WHICH ALL OF THOSE INDIVIDUAL STORIES WEAVE TOGETHER IN A HELIX THAT FOR 224 YEARS HAS CREATED A CULTURE ON THIS CAMPUS THAT STRIVES FOR THE MOTTO YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE ON YOUR DIPLOMAS — LUX LIBERTAS — LIGHT AND LIBERTY.

AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR US TO GIVE YOU THOSE PAPERS AND TURN THE PAGE FROM THIS CHAPTER IN YOUR STORY TO THE NEXT.

YOU HAVE BEEN A PART OF THE LONG, IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL ITSELF. TIME HERE MARCHES ON, PEOPLE HERE MARCH ON, BUT THE PLOT OF OUR SHARED STORY — TO BRING LIGHT AND LIBERTY TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE AND THE WORLD — REMAINS THE SAME.

YOU’VE WALKED THIS UNIVERSITY’S BRICK PATHS FOR THE LAST TIME AS STUDENTS, BUT AS YOU SET OFF INTO A WORLD OF UNCERTAINTY, THE CHOICES YOU MAKE IN YOUR UNIQUE PURSUIT OF YOUR UNIQUE STORIES BECOME THE GUIDING LIGHTS THAT FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL USE TO WALK THESE SAME BRICK PATHS.

YOUR CHOICES ON HOW TO APPLY THE POWERFUL SKILLS YOU LEARNED HERE AT UNC BECOME DATAPOINTS THAT STUDENTS 20 YEARS FROM NOW WILL USE TO BUILD THEIR MODEL OF THE CAROLINA WAY AND ALL THE POSSIBLE FUTURES IT MIGHT HAVE.

PARENTS, FAMILIES AND FRIENDS, THANK YOU FOR ENTRUSTING THESE STUDENTS YOU LOVE TO UNC. FACULTY, THANK YOU FOR PREPARING THESE STUDENTS TO BE LEADERS IN EVERY VOCATION AND AVOCATION. AND STUDENTS — GRADUATES — THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE ADDED TO THE STORY OF UNC AND EVERYTHING YOU WILL CONTINUE TO ADD. I LOOK FORWARD TO LISTENING TO ONE OF YOU GIVE THE GRADUATION SPEECH AT THE JOURNALISM SCHOOL IN 2037.

]]>1442Survey: Is N.C’s Born-Digital News Legacy Being Sent Down the Memory Hole?https://www.ryanthornburg.com/2015/03/25/nc-memory-hole-digital-news-survey/
Thu, 26 Mar 2015 01:35:55 +0000https://ryanthornburg.com/?p=985Continue reading "Survey: Is N.C’s Born-Digital News Legacy Being Sent Down the Memory Hole?"]]>

Just over 15 years ago the first big news story I worked on also turned out to be the first big news story of the digital news era. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke online, with the first and biggest stories of the 13-month saga posted online before they went into print. And it wasn’t just news stories — as Monica Lewinsky pointed out in her fascinating TED Talk last week, it was hundreds of pages of raw documents, photos, audio and video.

It wasn’t the first time the talk of presidential impeachment wafted through the streets of Washington, but it is the first scandal that is nearly impossible to re-create using the first rough draft of history. Those digital-first stories — the time and manner in which they packaged and presented online, the live online discussions, the changes big and small to the wording — are almost totally lost down a digital memory hole.

When I want to add this digital innovation to my list of “clips” for my resume, I often can’t. When I want to illustrate for my UNC journalism students a first-hand account of media innovation, they have to rely on their imaginations. And when historians and The Washington Post company look back on it not just 15 years from now but 150 years from now, they won’t have the benefit of some of the most ground-breaking features that drove public opinion.

But what’s more amazing is that if you work in a newsroom today, the legacy of your born-digital content is probably at risk just as much as mine was at the dawn of the digital news era. If you run a digital news business, one of your greatest competitive advantages is going 404 every day. And if you live in one of the communities served by a newspaper with a website, the story of your generation is being written in digital sand.

To help fix that, the National Endowment for the Humanities is sponsoring a survey of North Carolina news organizations to collect information about how they use and preserve born-digital news. It is part of the “Dodging the Memory Hole” work led by the Educopia Institute and the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. They are hoping to launch other state-wide surveys in five more states later this year.

The results of this online interview will be used to by librarians, technologists and journalists to establish industry standards for preserving born-digital news and to propose future projects that help news organizations and communities preserve and protect their legacies.

The initial findings are going to be presented at a gathering of North Carolina’s journalists, librarians, scholars, technologists, publishers, vendors, and other interested stakeholders on May 11-12 in Charlotte. You can also register for this event at https://educopia.org/events/dmh

The Educopia Institute, a nonprofit that works with educational and cultural institutions to increase their impact, will keep the responses completely anonymous in all research results, so that you and your organization cannot be identified. The research results will focus only on aggregated findings.

Preserving born-digital news is just as important as finding a viable business model for the creation of it. This generation’s digital native must tell the stories of our time and making them available to future generations so they know how and why we made this environment they will inherit.

One byproduct of all the recent articles about the growth of email newsletter that aim to “cut through the daily clutter” is an amazing amount of clutter about email newsletters. Here’s what you need to know today.

The Skimm was started by two NBC News producers in their 20s. It’s been around for two years. It goes out at 6 a.m. They have $1.1 million and 7 employees. They don’t talk about their subscriber numbers. Their blog is a fantastic read on media entrepreneurship, and we should hand it out to incoming freshmen at Chapel Hill. (https://blog.theskimm.com/)

Quartz’s Daily Brief also goes out at 6 a.m. There are three global versions, and users “click a lot on the links to opinion pieces and ‘random discoveries’ that we include in the second half of the email.” (httpss://blog.mailchimp.com/quartzs-email-centric-news-coverage/)

The Quartz email in June had 77,000 subscribers (62 percent of its Twitter followers). It has a 50-percent open rate. It “makes money.” (https://www.themediabriefing.com/article/quartz-newsletters-advice-simon-davies-daily-brief)

Time’s email newsletter has 650,000 subscribers. The curated daily list of 12 stories every morning has a 40 percent open rate, that it says is twice the industry average. That’s up from a 17 percent open rate when it was auto-generated headlines. (https://www.poynter.org/news/media-innovation/277009/how-times-email-newsletter-achieves-a-40-percent-open-rate/)

The daily newsletter about data — called Up, Down, All Around — from Lindsey Rogers Cook of U.S. News has subscribers “in the low hundreds” and open rates around 40 percent. (httpss://twitter.com/Lindzcook/status/553225591168966656)

Nieman Labs email newsletter (in March 2013) had 10,000 subscribers and drove 3 percent of monthly pageviews. If what I’ve seen elsewhere holds true, each visit from an email newsletter is worth about 3x as many page views as from social media. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2013/03/texas-tribune-expands-its-niche-email-business-with-in-the-flow/)

At Buzzfeed, email ranks behind Pinterest in the amount of traffic it generates for the site. (https://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/280943/how-newsletters-became-one-of-buzzfeeds-top-sources-of-traffic/)

The number of subscribers to Nieman Lab’s email newsletter is 10 percent of the number of Twitter followers it has. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2014/06/convert-your-twitter-followers-to-email-subscribers-with-a-twitter-lead-generation-card/)

75% of Digg’s users say they use email to share links in April 2013. It was more popular than any other service they used to share links. (https://blog.digg.com/post/49264812779/were-still-learning)

Today in Tabs grew from 1,000 subscribers in January 2014 to 10,000 in January 2015. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2014/01/how-a-free-email-newsletter-turned-a-computer-programmer-into-a-newsweek-columnist/ and httpss://twitter.com/rustyk5/status/553224153978142720)

In June, Nieman Lab used a Twitter card to solicit subscriptions to the newsletter. It went out to 157,000 followers and yielded 370 new subscribers. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2014/06/convert-your-twitter-followers-to-email-subscribers-with-a-twitter-lead-generation-card/)

The Slurve is a daily newsletter about baseball. It costs $4 a month or $36 a year. It goes out about 10 a.m., and has about 150 links and 2,700 words. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2013/09/a-solo-home-run-the-slurve-is-trying-to-build-an-authentic-profitable-business-around-email/)

Hiring managers at news organizations know they need reporters who know programming, or professor know it’s a valuable skill to teach students. But too often I suspect they don’t know what they really mean. Here’s a quick guide to help you find what you’re looking for.

I was lucky enough to be working at The Washington Post in 2005 when the identity of Deep Throat was revealed. I remembered at the time thinking what a relief it was for The Post to finally have it out there — now we could focus on the future.

But 10 years later I find myself doing something I once criticized journalism students for doing — being nostalgic for something I never really knew. If given the choice between working at Facebook in 2015 and The Washington Post in 1975, I’d choose the later.

At the same time, if the choice were between Facebook 2015 and The Washington Post 2015, I’d probably go for Facebook.

The future of journalism is forcing us to think about technology and economics, which is not just healthy but exciting. But those topics can dull our sense for holding powerful people accountable, shining light in dark places and explaining an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

One of the most important attributes of data driven journalism is that it scales, and the primary goal of my OpenRural, Open N.C. and data dashboard projects has been to democratize data so that we start seeing the same types of reporting and presentation in small community papers that we see in the big national news sites. So when I saw Thursday’s New York Times graphic on the race gap in America’s police departments, I immediately thought that something similar could be done pretty quickly that would look at North Carolina towns.

Click on the image to see the interactive version of an embeddable graphic that can easily — and at no cost — be dropped in to any news site or blog (except this one … because I’m still hosting it on javascript-averse wordpress.com).

Click to view the interactive version on Tableau Public.

The graphic alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Tippett pointed out when I showed her the chart that most of the Latinos in Siler City aren’t even eligible to join the city’s police force — 40% are not adults, and 80% of adult Hispanics there are not citizens.

And many of these police forces are very small, which makes it easy for them to end up with huge percentage disparities in the racial breakdowns of their police and residents. Tiny Biscoe, for example, only has nine police officers. Wagram has two police officers — half of which are white and half of which are “other.”

The other potential problem with the data is that it’s seven years old. But so is the data used by The Times.

This is just an example of how we might continue to democratize data. This graphic could be emailed to an editor of each news outlet in North Carolina, along with a list of suggested questions that local reporters could ask to quickly make the data more relevant.

Suggested Questions to Localize This Data Driven Story

“This data is seven years old. Does it still look accurate to you? Can you provide me with some more recent data of the racial and ethnic breakdown of the police department?”

“Why do you think your department has a higher percentage of white officers than the residents?”

“How does the racial disparity between the police department and local residents effect the way your department works?”

“Walk me through the hiring process for new officers. How does a candidate’s race factor in to hiring decisions, if at all?”

“How do you publicize vacancies in the department? Do you do anything to recruit minority applicants?”

“What percentage of your officers live in the city? How important is it that officers come from within the city? Why?”

Also, seek opinions of others — both insiders such as city council members and community leaders as well as people on the street. Consider using social media such as Facebook or Twitter to ask people what they think about the data and these questions. This is the start of a conversation, not the end. Be sure to get a diversity of perspectives — age, gender, geography and certainly race and ethnicity.

The Challenge: News Deserts

But even if we acquire, clean and produce data along with some simple story guides, data driven journalism may still not find its way into smaller newspapers if nobody is there to receive our help. At many papers, this would still be seen as enterprise reporting. As an editor with a staff you can count on one hand, do you send a reporter out prospecting for answers to these somewhat uncomfortable questions? Or do you have them write up the day’s arrests? Or preview this weekend’s chamber of commerce golf tournament?

The trend in automation should free up the best writers and best reporters to add the how and why context that still needs to be done by humans. If I were a beat reporter at a newspaper I’d be working as fast I could to convince by editor to let a computer write the scut stories I have to write and free me up to do more explanatory and accountability reporting, or to craft beautifully written narratives.

One significant risk is that for the last decade we’ve seen “good enough” journalism growing in popularity. News organizations that continue to have a strategy of harvesting profits rather than investing in growth will no doubt cut reporters if machines can write commodity news at a lower cost.

If I were a young journalist looking for my first job, I’d be looking for news organizations that are sustaining a small margin and growing both expenses and revenues — the ones that are using both bots and humans.

The trend toward automation will result in an emphasis on the news value of impact. Mass customization is going to change the nouns in the leads of stories from the third person to the second — “investors” will become “you.”

The trick is how to make money off this. News organizations that continue to see themselves as manufacturers of goods will probably increase the volume of digital commodity content they publish and continue to drive down ad rates.

But smart content companies are evolving from a manufacturing industry to a service industry, and trying to create, explain and capture the value they provide to each client by getting the right information to the right people at the right time.

What we see now as data is as unsophisticated as what many of us thought of data when Google first made its mission organizing all of it. We think of data now as numbers in tables — scores, money, temperatures, but we’ll soon see data as behavior and content metadata. And we will see automated stories that incorporate the user’s data and the data of her social network as well.

That level of concierge news service, though, is going to come at a price for users. If we’ve seen the democratization of media this automation trend has the potential to create a world of media haves and have nots — the haves will pay premium subscription fees to get highly personalized news from bots. The have-nots will get generic news (maybe written by bots as well).

The one thing from which I think everyone will benefit is an increase in the quality and frequency of narrative writing, and of explanatory and accountability reporting.

To aid that transition I’m working on the idea that we can use digital public records to build a newsroom dashboard system that will alert beat reporters to possible story ideas. Automated Insights and Narrative Science are scaling commodity news stories. I want to see if we can lower the human reporters’ opportunity cost of pursuing enterprise stories that land with much bigger and much longer lasting impact.

If you want a pithy quote from a journalism prof. on the effect that robot writers are going to have on the job market for journalism students, here it is: “My C students are probably screwed. My A students are going to do better than ever.”